Thursday, May 31, 2012

New Orleans LA,-As
required by the Louisiana Supreme Court, the New Orleans Police
Department is issuing a public advisory regarding a sobriety checkpoint
that will be conducted tomorrow night.

The New Orleans Police Department’s
Traffic Division will conduct a sobriety checkpoint, in Treme,
beginning at approximately 9:00 P.M. and will conclude at approximately
5:00 A.M. Motorists will experience minimal delays and should have the
proper documentation available if requested, i.e., proof of insurance,
driver’s license, etc.

Superintendent
of Police Ronal Serpas said” I would like to remind all drivers to
always drink responsibly and use a designated driver”.

This is the second "Treme" checkpoint announced this month. They must like it over there wherever they are. Where does Serpas consider Treme's boundaries to be anyway? If he's working from the 73 census-tract defined "official" neighborhoods, then he's got anywhere within this rectangular space bounded by Broad, Rampart, Esplanade, and St. Louis streets to hide. But if I had to put money on it I'd say they'll be near the Claiborne overpass somewhere either at Orleans or Esplanade.

Oh and while we're on the topic of that part of town, I was in Congo Square last weekend where I took this photo of the official signage. I'm probably not the first person to ask but what is purpose of the quotation marks around the word, "vicinity"?

As many of you are aware, there are four seasons in New Orleans. They are Carnival, Festival, Hurricane, and Football. Tomorrow we transition from the second into the third. Halfway through 2012 already and all we've lost is a head coach, a quarterback, a newspaper, two councilmembers, and the concept of public education. Oh and, I guess, we're down one Nacho Mama's too.

The point is we're about on par in 2012 as far as horrible thing generation is concerned, so I'm expecting this year's storms to inflict only a normal amount of damage. Likewise, the official forecasters are expecting a normal-to-"below average" amount of activity this year. In other words, if you're not sure you remember your strategy for coping with "floating balls of fire ants" now would be a good time to freshen up.

Meanwhile, NOLA.com is celebrating the change in season with a new color scheme. Because, of course, that was the number one thing everyone was so upset with them about. Still it might be fun if they kept changing colors with the seasons like this. At that pace, we could expect a new NOLA.com palette for every 6th or 7th Gambit Dining Guide issue published each year. There are worse ways to mark the days, I guess.

Anyway, what was I even talking about here? Oh yeah, Hurricane Season. Perhaps it's a sign of our complacency as of late, but it isn't getting much play in the news this week. Maybe our local editors need to check with BCG before publishing anything that might negatively affect the brand. Oh well, since Fridays are still on the Times-Picayune print calendar, I guess we'll find out tomorrow what they've got planned.

Louisiana is now moving to the point that it recognizes that there is
no way we can save the coast, even as it is today. You know, we don't
even talk anymore about restoring what we had, say a century ago. But
even what we have today is not, it's not going to be possible to keep,
keep it the way it is. So we're going to have to make very difficult
choices and focus on trying to restore certain portions of the coast,
which inevitably will go on the expense of other portions of the coast.
And that's, that's a very difficult political problem. But it is one
that has to be addressed, and it has to be addressed very soon. Because
the longer we wait, the less we will be able to do.

Scientists and public officials in Louisiana and other parts of the Gulf
Coast have been sounding the alarm about coastal erosion for decades,
urging Congress to dedicate the tens of billions of dollars needed to restore and protect Louisiana's wetlands.

But efforts to get more federal aid have been hampered because potential
economic losses haven't been clearly quantified, according to King
Milling, chairman of America's Wetland Foundation. That's why a new
study by Entergy Corp. aiming to provide some answers is an important
development -- and policymakers need to heed its dire projections.

Entergy spent $4.2 million to conduct coastal restoration research
for the whole region. The researchers looked at 800 coastal Zip codes
across 77 parishes and counties from Texas to Florida.

The study assumes a major storm like Katrina, which used to hit a
community once in the average lifetime, will hit twice per lifetime by
2030. Estimating wind damage, storm surge and sea-level rise, Williams
estimated that total losses for the whole Gulf Coast region would reach
$350 billion by 2030 if nothing is done to make the area more resilient.

The story was given equal emphasis on NOLA.com with the face-eating guy in Florida, various mugshots from Northshore DWI arrests, and, of course, the very active Kitties-in-peril beat.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Every morning when Tom Benson gets up, says his morning rosaries, jogs his stations of the cross, and showers in holy water or whatever... I imagine he takes a few moments to thank the Father, Son, Spirit, Angels, Blessed Mother, and all the Saints for the "Bountygate" scandal.

After all, without that distraction, Saints fans and media would have spent all these months focusing on the way he's blasphemed against their savior and nobody wants to be the object of that witch hunt.

Last week I suggested that journalists displaced by the collapse of the Times-Picayune might take advantage of the boom in government Public Relations jobs and start looking for work actually writing rather than exploding the lies of our beleaguered ruling classes for a change. Later that same day, when, the mayor offered this statement

I look forward to talking with new management and others who have a
stake in the future of The Times-Picayune to discuss how we can help the
newspaper grow and not diminish.

Say, for example, if maybe we turned Howard Avenue into a special
journalism taxing district... or JoZone, if you will. Then we could
direct that revenue to a superboard staffed by several mayoral
appointees and the Convention and Visitors Bureau who could trickle the
money back into quality news stories we all can enjoy. You know, feel
good stuff like, "Unexpected Health Benefits Of Oiled Shellfish" or
"Councilmembers Enjoy Well-deserved Time Off" or "Jindal's Nationwide
Speaking Tour Appreciated By All" "NOPD Lauded For (Very) Warm Treatment
of Henry Glover"

Now that may look like a stupid joke to you and me but, as it turns out, Boston Consulting Group.. the people who brought you the HoZone concept.. were already a step ahead of us. James Gill explains.

Crime stories must be kept off
The Times-Picayune's front page, according to the Boston consultants who
produced a tourism "master plan" for New Orleans in 2009.

They won't have to worry about that so much from now on.

The report urges hiring a PR firm to "remove negative crime
perception and lower crime news-worthiness." To achieve this it is
apparently necessary to "determine type of information to be reported
and disbursement (sic)" and to "meet with NOPD to determine feasibility
based on developed parameters."

One thing we're learning is you've got to get up pretty early in the morning to out-evil the boys and girls at BCG. Although it looks as if the "Public-private" business lobbying monster, GNO inc is trying.

Let's be clear about this: When we have fights about amateurs versus professionals, when we have fights about print versus online, about paywalls that make pennies, about subscriptions instead of ads, about form and function instead of mission and management, we are having the fight the people in charge want us to have while they run away with the piggy bank.

I've got some similar thoughts which I intend to share later in the week but since she wrote hers already you should go read that now.
Also I think David Simon is a douche but you knew that already.

We want to rent a billboard close to the Georgia Dome. Black
background, big gold WHO DAT right in the heart of downtown Atlanta. If
we can raise the funds, it’ll stay all season long. We’re working on a
tag line, but of course it’ll have to be appropriate for a, ahem, larger
audience.

Make no mistake – we want every Falcon fan to feel our presence every
single time they approach their ridiculous circus tent of a stadium
during the second quarter on Sundays.

How near to the Georgia Dome were the "Our Mayor" billboards? Maybe we should ask Ben Edwards if he can get us a discount.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Across the vast Pacific, the mighty bluefin tuna carried radioactive contamination that leaked from Japan's
crippled nuclear plant to the shores of the United States 6,000 miles
away — the first time a huge migrating fish has been shown to carry
radioactivity such a distance.

"We were frankly kind of startled," said Nicholas Fisher, one of the researchers reporting the findings online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The levels of radioactive cesium
were 10 times higher than the amount measured in tuna off the
California coast in previous years. But even so, that's still far below
safe-to-eat limits set by the U.S. and Japanese governments.

On the bright side, we can expect our sushi to be bacteria-free for a while now that it comes pre-radiated.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Here's something else. I use a browser plug-in called Do Not Track Plus in order to keep this sort of thing to a minimum. But I usually have to disable it in order to read NOLA.com... particularly the Saints pages there. One advantage of a print edition is it isn't quite as into reading you back as a website is.

Friday, May 25, 2012

One thing I appreciated about the T-P was they were always calling attention to various personal exploits of mine. None of them were factually accurate but that never bothered me. I was just happy they spelled my name right.

People read the paper for the quality of its reporting not because of the big bright yellow banners and 50 million v-logs from the parking lot on Airline Drive or whatever. Advance/Newhouse's strategy is based on picking the wrong side of that divide. Dambala suggests competing with them.

However, I would like to make a suggestion to the talented ones....start
your own online media outlet. The worst thing that ever happened to
the TP is NOLA.com. It didn't have to be that way but perhaps this is
an opportunity to do it right. The ONLY reason people read NOLA
is...well besides the Saints....the quality of journalism the TP staff
provides. If that quality disappears, NOLA will be a big pixel puke of
advertising with some Saints stuff thrown in. If Newhouse thinks it's
time to cull the TP, I think the culled staff of the TP should start
their own online venture and set about the task of culling NOLA.

And sure for everyone's sake I hope something like that is possible. But it still doesn't solve the fragmented readership problem that's baked in to online publishing. I'm sure there are a few folks in New Orleans who read The LensandUptown MessengerandNOLA Defenderand NOLA.com andGambit's siteandOffbeat'sand a handful of decent blogs and niche sites. Putting all that together you get something that approximates the
breadth of coverage you get from one good daily newspaper. But
realistically most of those "and"s are actually "or"s.

I like the Internet. I think the Internet has been awesome for
journalism. But that doesn't mean the Internet has to be the only thing
we do. If people like a paper and read a paper, buy a paper, and if people advertise in a paper, why not have a fucking paper?

The best way to make sure the most news is reaching the greatest number of readers is still printing up a damn daily newspaper. And that's the one thing nobody wants to do anymore.

The Times-Picayune remains profitable. As recently as the
beginning of this year, the paper was paying bonuses. Staffers got
bonuses at the end of 2010 and 2011 as the result of unexpected
profitability.

Also given New Orleans' well known intense interest in all things local, plus its relative lack of broadband access, plus the paper's relatively healthy high rate of penetration, one would think that this is a market uniquely suited to "buck the trend" and maintain its print newspaper. But nevermind all that. What's really important is the parent company's national strategy.

Like the Ann Arbor News, The Times-Picayune is an arm
of Advance Publications, owned by the Newhouse family, which owns a
chain of newspapers and magazines across the country. As a private
corporation, the Newhouse/Advance financial holdings are a closely
guarded secret, but The Times-Picayune has always been
considered one of the jewels in the Newhouse chain, both for its
profitability and the quality of its journalism, which has won numerous
Pulitzer Prizes.

Look, right now very, very few newspaper "company" executives have any
idea what the fuck they're doing, and instead of letting newspapers do
what they're good at and break even or make small profits, they're
determined to flail around and blither about "new technologies and
changing tastes" and make excuses for killing off their product. I do
not get it anymore. I used to think this was just about money, and while
newspapers make money they don't make ENOUGH money, but what's
happening to the Times-Pic is destroying something that made unexpected amounts of money last year, so someone please explain to me why you'd want to mess with that.

And this, in turn, means more good news for our political and business leaders who'll be welcoming these media professionals over to their side. If they're smart they'll come up with some clever way to keep them there by creating a stream recurring revenue stream.

Say, for example, if maybe we turned Howard Avenue into a special journalism taxing district... or JoZone, if you will. Then we could direct that revenue to a superboard staffed by several mayoral appointees and the Convention and Visitors Bureau who could trickle the money back into quality news stories we all can enjoy. You know, feel good stuff like, "Unexpected Health Benefits Of Oiled Shellfish" or "Councilmembers Enjoy Well-deserved Time Off" or "Jindal's Nationwide Speaking Tour Appreciated By All" "NOPD Lauded For (Very) Warm Treatment of Henry Glover"

Just whatever happens, please do not let Newhouse sell the paper off to Tom Benson, as some are already suggesting. He'll just combine it with the Clarion Herald and re-name it like the Daily Angel-Spirit or something as stupid.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which distinguished itself amid great
adversity during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, is about to enact
large staff cuts and may cut back its print publishing schedule to
several days a week, according to two employees with knowledge of the
plans.

Newhouse Newspapers, which owns the Times-Picayune, will
apparently be working off a blueprint the company used in Ann Arbor,
Mich., where it reduced the frequency of the Ann Arbor News, emphasized
the Web site as a primary distributor of news and in the process
instituted wholesale layoffs to cut costs.

It would be wrong to say anyone is shocked given the industry trends. Nonetheless it is difficult to overstate the scale of a disaster the subtraction of a major daily from New Orleans would be. Certainly no one can say this is a town that lacks for news.

And for all the (deserved, mind you) criticism leveled at the paper for its consensus elite to conservative editorial bent, no one can deny that.. even during the recent years of gradual reduction.. it is (was?) among the very best American daily newspapers. Just this past Friday, in fact, I kept myself distracted from a dismal all-staff meeting at work by reading through that day's installment of the T-P's extraordinary series on Louisiana prisons. And while I was doing that I actually thought about how lucky we are to live in a city where the paper at least still fucking tries despite everything. And then just a few days later, here we are.

Maybe if they tweaked the strategy a bit and published only on days when the city council had a quorum they could keep it together. Maybe if they brought on a couple of these robot sports writers... or maybe if they outsourced a bureau or two to Sal Perricone's various NOLA.com personas...or sold the naming rights to Mercedes-Benz.. or.. oh nevermind.

Any way you look at this, it's horrible news for the city. Hopefully it isn't as bad as what the NYT is reporting but it's likely going to be awful regardless.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

This should be interesting. Word comes in at this late hour that the legislature might try to sneak in the original version of the HoZone bill minus Senator Peterson's amendments this afternoon.

Update: The bill did not come up today after all.

In today's papers, the mayor made some extraordinary comments that should be noted. For instance, here he tells City Business that the amendments, which take into account the democratically expressed concerns of actual downtown residents, “don’t make any sense from a governing perspective.” According to the mayor. "governing perspective" comes not from listening to the concerns of the constituency so much as being in the right meetings with the relevant lords.

But Landrieu insisted he was “counting votes” in the legislature and
said that Peterson refused to accept a proposal that was workable.

“Had she been in all the meetings I had been in, or if she would have
taken responsibility for creating this out of nothing, instead of
coming in during the middle, she may have been more attuned to the
political possibilities,” Landrieu said.

Landrieu said the argument that more of the new tax revenue should go to infrastructure improvements than marketing is "penny-wise and pound-foolish ... because marketing is actually the thing that actually produces more tax revenue for infrastructure."

Rrriiight. Mitch is literally proposing that we market our way to better infrastructure.

Let's back up a few steps here just to show how absurd all this is. The original reason Mitch and friends told us we needed a HoZone tax was because the Convention Center had offered to spend its $30 million surplus on downtown street improvements but insisted that a continuing revenue source be created in order to maintain those improvements. Of course there's no real need to tie this money which already exists to a new HoZone tax but Mitch and friends needed a bargaining chip and figured these infrastructure improvements would do. They even used the "ticking clock" of the countdown to next year's Superbowl as a kind of false crisis in order to force the issue.

So in order to resolve this crisis that Mitch and friends had intentionally invented, they demanded that the legislature create a special district governed by an unelected superboard of hospitality magnates. The superboard would determine how revenues generated by taxes on things like hotel rooms and restaurant bills could be dispersed.

According to their plan some of that money would indeed go toward maintaining the promised street improvements, but most of it would go to the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp and the Convention and Vistitors Bureau where it would be used primarily to fund advertising campaigns. Or at least that's what we were told. Since the CVB likes to consider itself a private club its leadership insists that it need not disclose exactly what it does with the public funds it receives.

Senator Peterson's amendments reversed all of this. The amended bill struck the superboard entirely and re-directed the larger share of the revenue away from the hoteliers' clubs and back toward the street maintenance Mitch and friends began this process by telling us were the essential issue in the first place. But because Peterson had not "been in all the meetings" Mitch immediately declared her revisions a "nonstarter."

And now he's telling us that the real way to spend money on infrastructure... you know... the way that makes sense from a "governing perspective" works like this. First, give all the money to the private hoteliers' clubs. Next, the clubs use that money to make commercials for their hotels (probably... but who can know?) Then later, through some "pound-wise" process this all trickles back into money for street maintenance. How exactly isn't important. Nor is it clear how long this trickle-down effect takes which is weird given that the "clock is ticking" and all.

Anyway Mitch's vote counting must have gone well for him because apparently this evening Senator Murray has brought up the bill minus the amendments for a full vote of the state senate (Update: No this is not correct as it turns out) so stay tuned. As we noted in an earlier post, arrogance is quite the thing these days.

Because football sells itself as America's sport and the people running
football -- as they make up new rules to exploit their leverage over
everyone and everything -- embody exactly the sort of greed and
arrogance that's slowly chipping away at America, in general. And just
like in America, they're pretty much getting away with it because we're
all too busy or confused to care. Plus, at this point, greed and
arrogance seems synonymous with any major success in American business,
so really why should we waste our energy getting upset about it here?
This cloud of confusion and cynicism follows pretty much every
controversy involving Roger Goodell these days.

Goodell and his cronies are now being sued by the NFLPA for collusion during the supposedly uncapped 2010 season. Yesterday I suggested that it's precisely this sort of arrogance that is keeping Tom Benson from just paying Drew Brees what he's worth on the NFL market. This just reinforces such suspicion.

Believe it or not I can actually see Zach Galifianikas as Ignatius Reilly not so much because of the obvious typecasting but because of what NOLADef's Shay Sokol hints at in this paragraph.

Ignatius J. Reilly once mused, “Apparently I lack some particular
perversion which today’s employer is seeking.” Zach Galifianakis – the
comedian who smoked a joint on television – might be uttering those lines to himself this week

Sokol is actually trying to make a slightly different point with that quote but it hits very near to the heart of Confederacy which I've always thought of as a subversive book. Or at least, I think it succeeds because it captures that essentially subversive something about New Orleanians that makes so many of us incompatible with "the particular perversions" of regimented employment in Ignatius' or any other day. If you've seen Galifianakis' standup act, you get the impression that he's just smart enough to strike the right tone.

On the whole, though, I still don't expect Hollywood to get this right no matter who they put in the cast. It will be too tempting and too easy to turn Confederacy into a gross-out slapstick like the American Pie franchise rather than stay true to the Simpsonsesque satire it really is. Anyway, as we all know by now, the odds are against the movie ever getting made which is just fine with me.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says he wants every fan in every stadium
to be able to access the Internet using whatever device they carry into
the stands with them, as the NFL continues to grapple with the fact that
for many fans, watching games on TV at home — for free — is a better
experience than spending a small fortune to go to the game.

What he's not saying, of course, is that it will probably cost $20 (or 2 beers) per quarter to access or some such thing.

I caught the beginning of the Mayor's speech, then I had to go do something, then I got to hear the end. Reading through the tweets and early reports and stuff to glean the middle part. Looks like a whole lot of nothing so far.

That is until we get the details of these anti-crime initiatives sorted out. From here I'd say some of it looks benign but worth doing. Mitch is asking for mentoring, counseling, and mental health services... you know.. all the stuff the Governor has spent the last year and a half slicing out of the budget.

The initiative comes from the highest reaches of federal law
enforcement; it is the fruit of conversations between Mayor Mitch
Landrieu and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

The effort appears
to be spearheaded by the local office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, better known as ATF, which has for
years worked with the New Orleans Police Department on larger-scale gun
and gang crimes.

U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, in a conference call
with Phillip Durham, head of the local ATF branch, acknowledged Monday
that "additional resources" from the federal government are forthcoming.
"At this time, we cannot provide further details on this," Letten said.

After issuing a statement
denouncing Krauthammer’s remarks as “irresponsible” and “dangerous,”
Toscano said the AUVSI would go on the offensive against critics. While
the strategy is still being shaped, Toscano made it sound like something
straight out of a crisis-management textbook — or Orwell. The AUVSI
wants to bombard the American public with positive images and messages
about drones in an effort to reverse the growing perception of the
aircraft as a threat to privacy and safety.

“You have to keep repeating the good words,” Toscano explained.
“People who don’t know what they’re talking about say these are spy
planes or killer drones. They’re not.” He criticized Salon and other
news organizations for using the term “drones,” saying “remotely piloted
vehicles” is more accurate.

Anyway, if you want to read the Mayor's remarks they're posted here. I haven't figured out how to filter out all the stuff about "speaking with one voice" yet, so, sorry about that.

Sources say the proposed "Hospitality Zone" bill appears dead for this
year’s legislative session. That news comes after a Senate committee
amended the proposed measure at the request of state Sen. Karen
Carter-Peterson, D-New Orleans. Hospitality industry leaders reportedly
cannot accept Peterson’s amendments, and they are said to be ready to
pull the plug on the bill.

Peterson's amendments struck the unnecessary super board of business owners and dedicated more money to infrastructure maintenance (the bill's big selling point) than to the Convention and Visitors Bureau's slush fund (the real reason CVB wanted this in the first place).

By pulling the bill, Mayor Landrieu and his hotelier allies are telling us that if they can't get what they want, downtown doesn't get any of these street repairs they keep telling us we need before the Superbowl. What happened? Mitch kept telling us the "clock is ticking." Did they call a timeout?

North Carolina Pastor Charles Worley shared with his congregation
this weekend how he thinks the country should deal with the scourge of
gay men and lesbians: Lock them into a pen with an electrified fence,
drop food down to them, and because they can’t reproduce, they will die
out.

LONDON — A Channel Islands online auction house has angered Ronald
Reagan's foundation by claiming to offer a vial that once contained his
blood.

The PFCAuctions house says the vial contains some of Reagan's dried
blood residue. The auctioneers say it was used by the laboratory that
tested Reagan's blood when he was hospitalized after a 1981
assassination attempt in Washington.

Further, (Tom) Benson has undergone an almost St. Paul-like conversion in
his personal life, thanks in part, friends and associates say, to the
faithful work of his wife.

In recent years, he has made millions
of dollars in contributions to Catholic Charities, Ochsner Medical
Center, Loyola and Tulane universities. And for every lucrative
donation, there've been countless more behind-the-scenes gestures.

The Senate Armed Services Committee is expected to mark up the
defense authorization bill tomorrow morning, making crucial decisions on
an amendment that seeks to “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda.

The
amendment received bi-partisan support in the House of Representatives
last wek and was voted on en bloc along with 15 other amendments to the
National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), whose other controversial,
Republican-backed provisions include indefinite detention and banning
same sex marriage on military facilities.

Members of Congress aren’t sounding any smarter. In fact, the 112th
Congress speaks collectively at a 10th grade level, down from that of a
high school junior in 2005, according to a Sunlight Foundation study released this week.

Monday, May 21, 2012

In its current incarnation, this small republic operates with a
populist authoritarian government led by individuals in search of
advancement to more prosperous and internationally significant posts.
Their skillful combination of populist rhetoric, economic manipulation
of a state dominated economy, and first-world media management has
maintained them in power. The regime has taken every opportunity to
create illusions of progress by continuously bleeding the nation's
treasury to buy the participation of foreign companies that receive
tax-supported subsidies. Their arsenal of management also includes the
use of state resources to conclude beneficial contracts with favored
national business interests.

When confronted with opposition, the regime mobilizes its sycophantic
adherents and paid partisans to discredit, isolate, and eventually
drive out any people with an ability or opportunity to address the real
issues and consequences of the regime's behavior.

Just noticed on a parallel internet that the mayor's big "State of the City" address has been moved from the NOCCA campus over to the Mahalia Jackson Theater. The details copied and pasted from what I assume was a press release.

LAST-MINUTE
LOCATION CHANGE FOR Mayor Landrieu's "2012 State of the City Address
tomorrow at 2:00 PM

Due to an overwhelming response to
attend, we are relocating the State of the City speech to the Mahalia
Jackson Theatre. Thank you for your interest and we will see you there.

Also, speaking of the Mahalia Jackson Theater, just this past Friday I had my first chance to visit Armstrong Park since it reopened to the public. I happened on a small wedding ceremony in Congo Square of all places just as it was concluding. None of this has anything to do with anything other than to say that aside from the controversial statuary, it looks pretty nice in there. Here, I took a quick photo of the lagoon.

Hedge-Morrell and Johnson offered no explanation of why they both
skipped the council's next regular meeting this past Thursday, though
Hedge- Wednesday, when they also missed a special meeting Clarkson
called to try to take care of the numerous agenda items left unfinished
when the two walked out May 3. As for George, both suggested, though
again without really saying so, that they don't consider him qualified
to serve on the council but that their biggest objection is the fact he
was nominated by Head -- who, as Johnson pointed out, will continue to
sit on the council, meaning that George's selection could be seen as
giving her two votes on every issue.

It isn't clear that this is strictly true, although it probably is mostly so. Technically speaking, though, since the District B chair was won by Ms Head for this term in the most recent election it's hard to argue that there's really anything wrong with the councilmember occupying it to reflect the results of that election. But if Errol George really wanted to be on the council, he probably wouldn't keep showing up at so many meetings.

It remains to be seen whether or not any of this actually matters going down the road. It's fairly obvious that the mayor and the absent councilmembers are colluding on this appointment. That doesn't necessarily mean the mayor is getting any big prize in the deal, as some have suggested, though.

That's 19 million and it doesn't even take into account the restaurant
and parking taxes proposed for the zone. I am guessing this thing is
going to generate between 25 and 30 million...possibly double what they
are projecting. However the RevPar number is a cumulative average of
all hotel rooms rented in the city, while the bulk of hotels lie in the
proposed Hospitality Zone, many do not. I do not believe the tax will
apply to hotel/motel rooms outside of the Zone so this number may be
high...still it will most likely be higher than the base 16 million they
are projecting for all the extra taxes imposed.

Also, they are not factoring in the annual increase in room rentals we've seen almost every year for the past few years. The 2012 numbers are already up 20.4% (per Smith Travel Research) from last year. That puts this year's total revenues at $1,310,834,532. That would put the 2012 tax generated from only the hotel/motel tax @ $22,939,604 (Please check my math).

Since we don't have exact numbers for rooms and revenue specific to the zone, this isn't the most precise guess but you can see what he's getting at. Also if you add the fact that tourism officials are expecting to increase the annual volume of visitors to downtown amusements, there's another reason to expect that the pie is going to be plenty exploded enough for Convention and Visitors' Bureau to be more than pleased even with their reduced slice.

On Friday, Saints owner Tom Benson tried to assuage the fears of his
team's loyal fan base by guaranteeing Brees "will be playing here this
season."

No one doubts Brees will, at some point, be in a Saints uniform. The exclusive rights free agent tag pretty much guarantees it.

But
it's one thing to be playing here and quite another to be playing here
happily -- and Brees clearly will not be happy playing under the
franchise tag.

"It's been extremely frustrating for me," Brees said last week. "I didn't think the negotiation really should have been this difficult. But here we are."

This is the sort of thing that can only happen in a Tom Benson run organization. If the rules say Benson can force a star player to work under unfavorable circumstances, he's perfectly fine with doing that.

Given how well the market has defined the parameters of this negotiation, one would expect the two sides could work something out. Everyone knows Brees' resume. Having been the first quarterback to lead the Saints to a Superbowl championship would be impressive enough. Putting together the best statistical season for any quarterback in NFL history is pretty strong argument in his favor as well. Having done all of this within an environment where these achievements are defined in the public imagination as a crucial element in the re-birth of an entire city in the wake of disaster, he's attained a rare status normally reserved for conquering generals or mythological figures.

But in Benson-land, everything is really about Tom Benson. Which is what I think is probably causing this to drag on the way it has.

His reorganization of the front office -- featuring the appointment of
three New Orleans natives to key posts: Chief Financial Officer Dennis
Lauscha, Vice President of Marketing Ben Hales, and Vice President of
Communications Greg Bensel -- has stabilized the club and transformed it
from what some saw as a standoffish, insular institution to a beloved
community-minded civic leader.

I think the Brees negotiations give the lie to any suggestion that Benson's organization has "transformed." Tom Benson wants everyone to know Tom Benson is in charge. Peter King's column today features an interview with former NFL (and Saints) executive Jim Miller who offers this insight.

The only positive news about the Brees negotiation is that money appears to be the major issue. Jack Donlan, the NFL's lead labor negotiator in the 1980s, believed any negotiation where money is the issue should never result in a prolonged stalemate. One side starts high, the other starts lower and the two sides eventually settle in the middle.

If that's where this thing has been hung up (for 2 years running, now) then we have to conclude that it's actually about something more than money. It's about Tom Benson wanting to make the point that he's the boss of everyone including his folk-hero superstar quarterback.

Friday, May 18, 2012

I'm beginning to wonder if Benson isn't punishing Brees for having been among the leaders who sued the NFL during the lockout. With so many of his players suing the league, Benson must be catching grief from his peers these days.

I'm opposed to the very concept of declaring any part of the city a "Zone" that belongs more to tourists than to residents. But I think Sen. Peterson's amendments have made the bill at least palatable despite it all. It will be interesting to see if the Mayor rejects the plan now that it actually dedicates more money to infrastructure maintenance since that was his major talking point in pushing it. If he pulls the bill now then he has to admit it was all just a ruse to put his board of hoteliers in place.

The New Orleans Police Department’s Traffic Division will
conduct a sobriety checkpoint, in Treme, beginning at approximately 9:00
P.M. and will conclude at approximately 5:00 A.M. Motorists will
experience minimal delays and should have the proper documentation
available if requested, i.e., proof of insurance, driver’s license,
etc.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

City Council members Cynthia Hedge-Morrell and Jon Johnson were both
no-shows today at a City Council meeting today, once again leaving the
city's legislative branch with only four present members, one short of
quorum, and unable to vote on any legislation. The four present members —
at-large Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson, at-large Councilwoman Stacy
Head, District C Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer and District A
Councilwoman Susan Guidry — were, however, able to make the most of what
quickly turned into, basically, a press event, shaming the two absent
members for bringing city government to a standstill.

Can we just skip this part and start guessing which hotel, restaurant, or bar owner the Mayor is going to appoint?

The forums, which will cover separate topics, will be held June 6, June
18 and July 11 on the Tulane campus. Schematic designs and plans for
traffic and parking management, stadium usage and game-day operations
will be presented at the forums, Tulane said.

A university statement said a planning consultant “chosen with input
from the mayor’s office and neighborhood representatives” will moderate
the sessions.

Under the terms of his suspension, Payton is expected to avoid
football or operational communication throughout the suspension. He can
only have contact with Benson. Contact on football-related matters is
strictly forbidden.

If he wants to contact a team official about a
non-football matter, he must do so by speaker-phone in the presence of
Saints legal counsel Vicky Neumeyer.

He had to get the NFL to approve his new downtown office in Benson Tower.

Nevertheless,
while Payton will be physically absent from the Saints' day-to-day
operations, team officials have ensured he'll be with them in spirit. To
honor their absent leader, team officials have purposefully left vacant
the chairs in the draft room and team meeting rooms. They'll do the
same with his seats on the team bus and plane during the season.

The
Saints had time to plan for Payton's departure. As they did last season
after his leg injury, they've divvied up his duties among Vitt,
Carmichael and offensive line coach Aaron Kromer. It was notable and
symbolic that Vitt, Carmichael, Spagnuolo and special teams coordinator
Grege McMahon shared the dais at Monday's post-minicamp press
conference.

Here is a photo from yesterday's T-P of the Triumvirs. That's Vitt on the left as Antony, Spags as Octavian, and Carmichael as the irrelevant one.

We'd have more faith in this business, if they'd at least stuck to the plan long enough to set a place for Elijah Payton at the first damn presser. Oh well, maybe Chris Ivory will remember to pour some out of his bottle the next time he smashes someone on the head with it to make up.

Also what, exactly, does Payton need an office in Benson Tower for anyway? Is that where he plans to keep his magic Xbox?

Landrieu, who as Louisiana's lieutenant governor served as the state's
top tourism official, has led the charge to create a hospitality zone in
part to create a funding stream to maintain $30 million in
infrastructure improvements that the convention center's board has
promised to make in and around the Quarter in preparation for next
year's Super Bowl. Another $10 million in FEMA money is slated to be
spent on the neighborhood's crumbling streets and sidewalks.

But wait. According to this same article, two thirds of the estimated $16 million in revenue generated from the HoZone taxes will go directly to NOTMC and NOCVB for marketing purposes. Furthermore, HoZone proponents have already claimed that the entire HoZone scheme is based on the recommendations of a consultant's report which we've now seen is basically a strategy for selling the Quarter as a puke pad for frat boys.

This isn't about "maintaining infrastructure improvements" that are already scheduled and funded regardless of whether the HoZone happens. It's about funding the hoteliers' marketing campaign and also granting them an inappropriate quasi-governmental role over the New Orleans neighborhoods their businesses already exploit.

BATON ROUGE -- Ferry service in the New Orleans area would be turned
over to a private contractor who could charge "market-rate fares" under a
bill that sailed out of a House committee Monday, one step short of
final legislative passage. Senate Bill 599 by Sen. Robert Adley, R-Benton, now heads to the House floor for a final vote.

Currently the ferry costs one dollar for cars or zero dollars for pedestrians. Can't imagine the magic of "the market" will improve that pricing for patrons.

Also Algiers Point residents have been requesting late night hours for the ferry going back as long as anyone can remember. Extending the hours would make sense for the many residents of the Point who work late hours in the French Quarter. And, of course, it would give that many more people an alternative to driving drunk across the bridge.

No link yet but the gist is they think the bill has been "fixed" because the board will now (at least nominally) function in an "advisory" role and because they think the distribution of funds between the city and the tourism associations has been improved somehow.

But the problem was always that the hoteliers shouldn't be given any sort of quasi-private official capacity for deciding how the city allocates resources. If they want to fund their own marketing campaign through their professional associations they're welcome to go right ahead and do that on their own.

Just because the Convention Center board voted during March 2012 to
contribute up to $30 million for refurbishing the Vieux Carré and a
larger hospitality zone in advance of next year’s Super Bowl event on
February 3, 2013 does not mean that vague and over-reaching legislation
should be rushed through as an on-demand commodity in response to a
proffered enticement. Where is the integrity in this process?

Anyway, my guess is the HoZone is going to pass with a little cosmetic tweaking to give the appearance of a vector for "community input". Maybe some of the Very Important Persons in the neighborhood associations will get seats on the board or something.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

What struck me was how, as a whole, the suggestions form a microcosm
of local society. Three main local personality types are discernible:
there are the preservationists, the cynics and the idealists. And most
of the conversation we've been having about the character of this place,
particularly since Katrina, falls into these same three groups:
appreciating our historical, cultural and ecological heritage; grappling
bluntly with our socio-economic, governmental and geo-physical
problems, and contemplating the willpower that lifted this city out of
its darkest moments and shined light on its future.

Euphony and marketability will weigh as heavily as content and
meaning in the eventual decision. For now, I offer that the public
discussion over renaming the Hornets has revealed something about New
Orleanians and how they perceive New Orleans, and that, once selected,
the final name will help influence how the rest of the world perceives
New Orleans to be.

Maybe. But I can't help but notice that the one common thread running through all of the suggested names, whatever else they may say about us, is that they are all terrible. Perhaps this reveals something about us as well.

According to this blurb highlighted by Gambit, it looks like Governor Jindal has failed to push a prison privatization initiative through the legislature for the second year in a row. Last week's Gambit cover story on this is well worth your time. It notes, among other problems, the perverse incentives inherent in the private prison business model.

Louisiana already has the highest rate of incarceration in the country,
one that state officials claim they are trying to reduce. Current state
contracts with GEO and CCA, however, guarantee minimum occupancy rates
of 95 percent. During the last push for privatization in 2011, the state
released a request for information — seeking statements of
qualifications from prospective operators — based on a guaranteed 96
percent occupancy rate.

Friday, May 11, 2012

In an effort to get the warring members of the city's legislative branch back to work, New Orleans City Council President Jackie Clarkson has called a special meeting for Wednesday morning, though it remains unclear whether at least five members will attend.

There's some concern that, if our local government shutdown lasts too long, then the council cedes to its prerogative to confirm the interim District B representative to the mayor. But I'm guessing if it comes to that he'll either pass or just affirm Stacy Head's nomination of Erroll George anyway.

Gold went on to argue how the trauma ultimately led to a Los Angeles dining scene that is stronger than it was before the riots:
“After the riots, L.A.'s insularity somehow fostered restaurants with a strength of purpose, even stronger and more specific than they had previously been. Mainstream restaurants began to find their inspiration within L.A.'s communities rather than outside them. You began to see chefs congregating at places like Guelaguetza and Sapp on their days off, and the standard Los Angeles style of service grew to become more like the shared-plates meals at local Japanese izakaya, or Thai coffee shops, or Korean pubs, or Mexican botana bars — almost as a sign of L.A. cultural literacy, but perhaps something more.
“The difference between high cuisine and street cuisine, between ‘ethnic’ cooking and American food, began to fade. Some of the best new "mainstream" restaurants of the last couple of years — Lukshon, Spice Table, LaOn, Post & Beam — were opened by classically trained chefs looking outward from their traditions rather than inward.”

Can't make a botana bar without breaking a few heads, I guess. Anyway it's all fun and games until Mitch Landrieu asks to have South Central annexed to the Hospitality Zone.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

In a brief but fiery speech, Mayor Mitch Landrieu urged hundreds of
hospitality industry executives and workers to storm the state capitol
next week to show support for a controversial proposal to create a new
hospitality district in downtown New Orleans and the French Quarter,
even as one of the bill's original backers in the legislature withdrew
his support Thursday. Landrieu criticized opponents of the proposal for
being focused on "small details" while ignoring the "big picture" that
New Orleans is trying to position itself to more than double its
visitation numbers and tourism revenue by 2018.

"All we want to do is get to work," Landrieu said. "If you show up and let your voice be heard, (legislators) will follow you."

While I’m not claiming that gay marriage has been the driving force in
American politics for the past decade, it’s very interesting to graph
the change in national attitude alongside the electoral results over
that same span. The issue has unseen importance, because it relates to
the key tensions in the Republican Party. The GOP has a real problem on
their hands with this one. Their libertarian and pragmatic moderate
factions are increasingly pro-gay marriage. But Republican pols, who
painted themselves into an ideological corner trying to appeal to the
fundagelicals, will have to continue opposing gay marriage, as the rest
of the country continues to “evolve” around them.

But Diane Ravitch is not pleased. Writing on her blog at Education Week,
Ravitch explained that, in her view, what Jindal has wrought is not a
good thing. "Unfortunately,' she writes, 'reform' today has become a
synonym for dismantling public education and demoralizing teachers. In
that sense, Bobby Jindal and his Teach For America/Broad-trained state
Commissioner of Education John White
are now the leaders of the reform movement." Broad refers to Eli Broad,
a major benefactor of Teach for America and the founder of an academy
for superintendents of which White was part of the class of 2010.

"All in all, the Jindal legislation is the most far-reaching attempt
in the nation to de-fund, dismantle, and obliterate public education,"
writes Ravitch. "Paul Pastorek,
the former Louisiana state superintendent, calls this a 'marketplace'
approach, which is right. With no new funding, everyone gets to dip into
the funds allocated for public schools and carve out a piece for
themselves, for vouchers, charters, home-schoolers, and for-profit
online providers. Is there any evidence that any of these changes will
improve education? No, none whatsoever. Does the Jindal law follow the
lead of any of the high-performing nations? No. But that's what 'reform'
means today."

Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, is
the author of ten books on education -- the most recent is "The Death
and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are
Undermining Education" -- and the editor of 14 others.

White's appointment was made possible as a result of a slate of BESE elections last year some of urged voters to pay closer attention to to no avail. In the New Orleans district, the pro-Jindal candidate was Kira Orange-Jones who received the endorsement of several local power brokers including Mitch Landrieu, Jackie Clarkson, and, of course, the Times-Picayune.

Interestingly enough, this is the second article by Tilove this week to feature serious criticisms of Jindal's school reform. Both have appeared on NOLA.com. Neither has shown up in the print edition.

A couple of quick points about Obama's somewhat tepid and many years late acknowledgement of basic human dignity his campaign people staged for him this afternoon.

First, insofar as Obama's announcement... which changes nothing and basically reiterates Dick Cheney's position that the legality of gay marriage should be left to the states to decide... insofar as that is an advance of any value, the credit for it goes not to Obama who has spent most of his time with this issue basically twisting in the wind. Instead it goes to the critics who have continued to drag him along on this "evolutionary" path. Glenn Greenwald and David Sirota both said this quite well today. Here's Greenwald's bit.

As David Sirota explained today,
this demonstrates why it is so vital to always apply critical pressure
even to politicians one likes and supports, and conversely, it
demonstrates why it is so foolish and irresponsible to devote oneself
with uncritical, blind adoration to a politician, whether in an election
year or any other time (unconditional allegiance is the surest way to
render one’s beliefs and agenda irrelevant). When someone who wields
political power does something you dislike or disagree with, it’s
incumbent upon you to object, criticize, and demand a different course.
Those who refuse to do so are abdicating the most basic duty of
citizenship and rendering themselves impotent.

The only problem I have with that paragraph is the part that implies there are supposed to be politicians we "like and support." When you get down to it, they're all just hollow vessels of ambition and suckassery. None of them deserve your support and certainly not your affection. But, depending on circumstances, some of them may be more susceptible to pressures that work in your favor and that's how you decide which way to vote.

The point is politics isn't really about the politicians. They're just the tools (in multiple senses of that word). Policy change is brought about by the forces acting upon those tools be they money, personal influence, or... in very very rare cases... genuine organized active demand of the voters. But the minute that demand relents is the minute the power to create further change is ceded. So, for the most part, I agree with Greenwald. I only disagree with the implication that we should ever stop and credit any politician for work they do not actually perform... such as leadership.

As to the politics of this thing, the stunt is a clever way to turn a poor election result in North Carolina into a "win the week" moment for Obama by momentarily firing up part of the much neglected Democratic base. Sure, the Fox and Freaks crowd responded predictably today but their pushback was so lame that it felt like going through the motions. I think they knew they'd been outmaneuvered... almost like a bluff had been called.

And that brings us to a final observation. Liberals like me have long said that the best way to counter the old Republican phony "values" playbook is to just show a little backbone on issues like gay rights. "Our" side has always enjoyed the true "moral" high ground in such matters. We've only suffered from a lack of candidates willing to articulate that clearly.

I actually don't think Obama has done that clearly enough yet but this was a strong enough move to cause an interesting reaction from the Romney camp and one that shows just how much the game has changed with regard to social wedge issues in national politics. It wasn't too too long ago that Republicans took it as a given that Democratic candidates could be separated from their "economic" base by a campaign strategy that highlighted issues like race, gay rights, abortion, recreational drug use, and the like.

I'm not about to say that this is no longer the case at all but I think those dynamics may be changing in a way that makes them less of a rout on the Republican side. For example, Mitt today, clearly knocked back on his heels, offered this reaction.

Mitt Romney would like to talk about the economy. He would apparently
prefer not to talk about marriage equality, education for the children
of illegal immigrants or medical marijuana. In an interivew with a CBS
affiliate in Colorado, Romney was visibly annoyed after a string of
questions that included his stance on gay marriage and civil unions
(he’s against them), in-state tuition for the children of illegal
immigrants (he’s against that) and medical marijuana (he thinks pot is a
“gateway drug”).

“Aren’t there issues of significance you’d like to talk about?” he
said, after the string of social issue questions, one of which came from
a viewer. “The economy, the growth of jobs, the need to put people back
to work, the challenges of Iran? We’ve got enormous issues that we face
but you want to talk about medical marijuan–go ahead, you want to talk about Medical–”

“Marijuana should not be legal in this country,” Romney said finally, before calling pot a “gateway drug.”

Have we really come so far now that it's the Republican candidate, whose party even more than ever now is firmly ensconced as the party of the privileged "1%", who is so thrown for a loop by a Democrat who just (sort of) endorsed gay marriage that the best response he can muster is, "It's the economy, stupid"? These are indeed the strangest of times.

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

The semantic hinge on which the case against the Saints swings - between "pay for performance" and "bounty" - has taken on a geographic dimension, too, as the pushback against player discipline mounts. Both New York professional football franchises, including the Super Bowl champion New York Giants, have flirted with behavior that appears to veer dangerously close to imperiling player safety.

When questions were raised about the Giants' apparent strategy, Big Blue backpedaled a bit, insisting no one targeted an opponent or deliberately sought to injure anyone. NFL spokesman Greg Aiello e-mailed The New York Times that distinction was sufficient.
"Players are held accountable for their actions on the field," Aiello wrote. "There were no illegal hits to the head or neck area against Kyle Williams on Sunday. There was no conduct by the Giants of any kind that would suggest an effort to injury Kyle Williams in any way."

To be sure, the intent of the defenders is a critical component in the scandal. Despite full throated cries from the Who Dat faithful that the game film does not support the Saints image as malicious head-hunters, the NFL's report claims the Saints were trying to achieve "knock-out" or "cart-off" hits that would sideline an opponent for all or part of a game, whether they succeeded in doing so or not.

More interesting is this quote Finney pulls up from a 1974 article (Finney doesn't say which paper) announcing the selection of the name Jazz.

Within days there was another story that began with: “Tune your trumpet,
Al Hirt. Polish your clarinet keys, Pete Fountain. Oil the pedals on
your baby grand, Ronnie Kole. It was looked upon here as the dawn of the
jazz age in the NBA.”

No offense to any of those three legendary New Orleans musicians but... way to go figuring out a way to evoke the essence of Jazz music by naming three white guys.

The story appeared yesterday afternoon on NOLA.com but, for whatever reason, hasn't yet made it into the print edition of the paper. Given the paper's editorial bent toward favoring the charter and privatization movement, some readers are already a little suspicious.

But consider this: If this report is serving as the rationale for
major policy decisions, taxing authority considerations, and
unprecedented acts of legislation in our city, then shouldn’t it be
available for review in the public realm for proper review and
consideration?

If a private business association wants to deny public records requests on the grounds that such records are "proprietary" information, isn't that precisely the problem with the whole concept of turning government authority over to these business associations in the first place?